Yah, only thing I can think of is that they were
..a.) trying to cut down on the number of panels to switch to and
..b.) it kinda makes sense to put it into colo(u)rs.

I am pretty sure that it is noted (somewhere) in the documentation after the switch, but of course if your used to a product, you might not immediately go look at the documentation, kind of a double edge sword.

As I teach English to Primary children all day, and am extremely careful to use a reduced vocabulary, enunciate everything carefully and repeat everything 3 times, I assume that I can relax "over here" and write things differently.

This is odd, as on all my visits to the United States (and having lived there for 3 years), I found most
Americans, frankly more verbal and better at expressing themselves than most English people.

I am not, and haven't been for many years, happy with the way LiveCode suddenly spring surprise interface changes on LiveCode users without either pointing these changes out, or, for that matter any obvious end-user consultation.

I am not, and haven't been for many years, happy with the way LiveCode suddenly spring surprise interface changes on LiveCode users without either pointing these changes out, or, for that matter any obvious end-user consultation.

Huh, I thought the interface was remarkably stable for long periods of time, i.e. the 2.x series stayed the same, 3.x to 7.1.4 was essentially the same (with minor changes in which stacks were loaded and folder arrangements), 8.x to 9.x looks the same to me, though I don't use them enough to really say for sure.

There definitely are more changes that were made from 7.x to 9.x compared to the previous generations, but I think the beta releases are where consultation would be listened too, before the series is hardened into a released stable.

Since none of my dev systems are (officially) supported, my own input would be of limited value. In fact, most of the 8.1.x IDEs and up don't completely work on my boxes, which is sad since if I have to load one to help someone here, it requires the additional step of firing up a VM just to run the IDE. From where I sit, that is a much greater tragedy